Today we celebrate the life and work of James Joyce with myriad Bloomsday festivities worldwide. Check out the James Joyce Centre for a list of events in Ireland and beyond. Here are a few more Bloomsday tidbits:
Ulysses meets Twitter: All day today, a brave cast of volunteer "tweaders" will post the novel's text 140 characters at a time through @11ysses.
For literary cartographers, Google Maps features "Bloomsday 2011 Worldwide," with which you can "navigate your way around the globe and see the many events organized by Irish cultural centers, arts organizations and enthusiastic individuals."
From Old Books on Front Street, Wilmington, N.C.: "We are going to stage a reading at the Bookstore with food and beer and we are asking people to take 10 Minute reading slots. We will start at 9 a.m. and go until 9 p.m., when we close. We are certain the book will improve as more beer is consumed."
The New Yorker's Book Bench blog offered a roundup of Bloomsday happenings in the city. You can also visit BloomsdayNYC.
The Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy blog featured "8 ways to celebrate James Joyce and Bloomsday," including Radio Bloomsday, which will broadcast an excerpted audio version of Ulysses on KPFK-FM (90.7) in L.A. and WBAI-FM (99.5) in New York (or listen to WBAI online).
Author Frank Delaney marks the one-year anniversary of his ambitious--you might even say Joycean--podcast project, RE: Joyce, in which he deconstructs Ulysses line by line. To celebrate, Delaney offers a rap tribute to James Joyce.
The Irish Independent featured an article on "the Bloomsday world tourists never get to hear about... and fans rarely get to see--the exploration of the notorious Monto district in Dublin's north inner city, an area famously riven by prostitution and iniquity.... 'Nighttown' in Ulysses is a slum of alleys, warrens, dens and parlors, where urchins, madams, prostitutes and intoxicated clientele roam. A 'navvy' vomits into a gutter, two 'redcoats' carouse. True to form, this was Monto in its heyday."
"Can you cross Dublin without passing a pub?" The Belfast Telegraph reported that Rory McCann, a 27-year old software developer, "claims he has settled decades of debate about the puzzle in Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses with a simple equation proving it can, indeed, be done. Using online maps, the Dubliner worked out an algorithm--a computer equation--which found how to criss-cross the capital, from north to south and east to west, away from the temptation of any pub."
"Would Joyce use an iPad?" This question was posed in the Digital Life section of the Sydney Morning Herald. "Were he writing today, it seems to us he would be drawn to the iPad, and particularly to Adobe Ideas," suggested Charles Wright, adding, "We're pretty sure his eyesight and his personal disposition would have made him something of a computerphobe.... Joyce wouldn't have taken to Twitter or anything like it. Indeed, having written what was until recently the longest sentence in English literature--4,391 words, in Ulysses--we can't imagine him even attempting to write an SMS or a tweet."
In the Huffington Post, Joan K. Smith explored the alternative Bloomsday universe imagined by artist Robert Berry, whose Ulysses Seen is, "of all things, a serialized electronic comic book--yes comic book--adaptation of Ulysses.... Ulysses Seen is ultimately a work of art in itself that resides in a sort of parallel and enriching dimension to the original book. It neither takes the place of nor cheapens the experience of reading the original, which is no small feat."
If comic books aren't radical enough for you, how about the full text of Ulysses converted into QR codes, so you can use a mobile device with a barcode scanner to read a section of the book.
Parting words from Irish Voice magazine: "Around the world these days there are thousands of Joycean scholars who make their living parsing and reparsing the great man who, perhaps much to his chagrin if he were alive, has become a symbol of all things Irish to millions. So celebrate this Bloomsday and if nothing else, read some of Molly’s soliloquy. It is there that the greatness of Joyce can be seen and the celebration of his masterwork is well deserved. Happy Bloomsday."